Night
by Fevered Dreams
Summary: [One-Shot]"We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise." -Plato


The night of January Twenty-first was bitter cold. Biting winds flowed around Titan's tower, whistling eerily off the sharp corners of the building's angular structure. Inside the tower, not a single mind was at rest after the events that occurred on Raven's birthday, and with Slade hiding somewhere in the darkness not a single eye was shut for very long.

Lest of all Raven's amethyst eyes, which were jammed closed as she tossed and turned in bed, trying to put the day's trauma out of her mind. She whimpered only slightly, a soft sound of emotion that barely escaped beyond taught, struggling lips.

It reached the ears of someone in the hallway, whose whereabouts I shall now discuss.

Starfire had risen earlier that night, unable to rest after finding a "scantily clad" Raven in the arms of Robin. Even though she knew Robin had some sort of relationship with her, beyond friendship, she could not help feeling a tinge of jealousy that flooded her veins every moment she thought of it. She felt bad for harboring ill against Raven, and was about to go down for a glass of water before the sound barely grazed her ear.

She tiptoed, in her purple, matching pajama top and bottom, to Raven's door, and opened the door just a sliver.

The miniscule shaft of light that stole across Raven's room reminded her subconscious of the lantern man in the Telltale Heart as it passed across her eyes, which unlike the man's victim were still sightful.

She flipped over in bed, her pallid face exposed to Starfire's sight. A cold sweat was slowly filtering down her elegant neck. Her sleep was disturbed, but not feigned.

Starfire, acting on impulse, slipped into the dark girl's room, gently closing the door behind her. Her footsteps drew a soft groan of protest from the floor, muffled by the carpet. She crawled into bed next to Raven, listening to the soft rustle her satiny pajama bottoms made against the same sheerness of her teammate's messy sheets. Gently, Starfire smoothed a few unruly strands of violet hair.

At Starfire's gentle interruption, Raven exhaled slightly lighter, and flipped onto her back, her head off to the side.

Starfire mused silently about her as she fell asleep, curled by Raven's arm, and how small and pale she looked in the moonlight-stricken, velvety darkness of her domain.

An hour passed before another wanderer stepped into the night-cooled halls, his flannel pants tousled and his shirt smelling of the sweet, heavy scent of sleep.

As the changeling crept down the hall for a mug of warm soymilk, his sub-etha hearing picked up two different levels of breathing from Raven's room. One shallow, quiet, and meek, the other calm and deeper.

Beast Boy, too, peered into Raven's darkness, sending dark grey early-light lazily rolling into her otherwise dim, warm room, and he stepped halfway inside. He saw Starfire, and the room's primary inhabitant, lying there in slumber. Raven's eyes flitted back and forth beneath her lids, her fingers curling and uncurling gently. Her lips made the shapes of "Azerath, Metrion, Zinthos" but only the nigh-inaudible pop of her lips moving together disturbed the chilled night.

Without hesitation, he slinked into the room, not bothering to close the door, and carefully eased himself next to her, taking her flung-out hand in his own and listening to her pulse flutter against his fingertips like a caged butterfly. He thought of her, as fleeting and elusive as a butterfly, and perhaps as vain, to think they would be that shallow to ostracize her for her past. With a half-conscious movement, he gently kissed her fingers, then exhaled again before gradually floating into an uneasy sleep.

All three slumbered peacefully, their ways as different as their appearances. Raven awoke to find the two people she cared most, surrounding her and protecting her from whatever lay in the shadows of her mind.

Normally, she would have kicked them out for pressing their faces against the glass, saying they had disturbed the sanctuary that comes in dreams.

But, for now, she decided…..

She could open a window to herself…

Just a sliver……

A sliver of light…..

Fin.-


End file.
